Election Commission asks social media companies to cooperate in monitoring content during elections

After giving guidelines to the political parties and candidates to be followed while campaigning for elections on social media, Election Commission of India has now asked the social media agencies to cooperate with the EC in monitoring content to ensure that everything remains intact according to the norms.

Election Commission is trying to make sure that social media and online platforms run by Google, Facebook and Twitter won’t be used to breach the code of conduct that governs candidates and political parties, and also make sure that no type of malicious content is being posted by candidates and that they don’t exceed campaign expense limit, says a report by TOI.

The Election Commission has instructed the social media companies to set up a mechanism to help prevent the posting of material which might have a negative impact on the election environment and also ensure a speedy removal of any malicious content being posted.

“EC has asked social media giants to cooperate for compliance of code of conduct, pre-certification of advertisement on web and monitor malicious content,” said an official. Though it is difficult to monitor and track content on social media or internet sites, as the servers are based out of USA.

With this EC has also assured that at no point would there be any attempt to censor social media, but has asked social media companies to make sure that advertisements they carry must conforms to the rules i.e. pre-certification of advertisement on web/social media (clearance of political advertisement by a committee before being displayed in social media/web by any registered party or by any group or association).

Last month, Election Commission had issued guidelines to be kept in mind for the political parties while campaigning on the social media and has said that legal provision on social media will remain the same as they are on other media.